Clik here to view.
FoI request reveals hearings held in private into offences ranging from perverting course of justice to criminal activity
Police forces are sacking almost 160 officers on average each year after misconduct hearings held in private, according to figures released under the Freedom of Information Act.
Forces across the UK have dismissed 477 officers in private hearings over the course of three years, following closed hearings into offences ranging from perverting the course of justice to criminal activity and breaches of discipline.
The data was released to the Times, and showed that, as a result of the hearings, 52 officers were demoted and hundreds fined or reprimanded. The newspaper said many of the accused are suspended on full pay or placed on restricted duties for long periods of time.
Widely differing outcomes between forces emerged in dealing with similar types of offences. Cases reportedly included a Kent officer telling a racist joke and getting a written warning, and a Hertfordshire officer demoted after derogatory remarks and obscene gestures to a colleague. Two officers of the Police Service of Northern Ireland were dismissed for being drunk while armed.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission can order public hearings, but the watchdog has so far held only one since it became operational in 2004.
Len Jackson, its chairman, told the Times that lack of transparency in misconduct hearings was a concern. "This is a genuine issue that does tax the commission. It's not easy but we are conscious that it is something we should be looking at all the time." The commission last week ordered Simon Harwood, the officer who inadvertently killed Ian Tomlinson at the G20 protests, to explain his actions for a second time in public after a rare move to hold his disciplinary proceedings in the open.
In the past, the only other officers disciplined at a public hearing were censured over their failure to respond correctly to repeated 999 calls by Colette Lynch, afterward killed by her former partner. Two Warwickshire officers were disciplined for failure to follow procedure when it emerged Lynch, 24, her mother and her brother had called officers dozens of times to say the partner, Percy Wright ,had been threatening her.
The Times reported that North Yorkshire police, which has 1,400 officers, recorded three misconduct hearings over three years. The Metropolitan police, the biggest force in the UK, brought 151 officers before misconduct hearings over the course of three years and dismissed or demanded the resignations of more than half of those cases.
